Apple on Wednesday unveiled its long-anticipated entry into the foldable smartphone market, the iPhone Duo, during a product event that also served as a coming-out party for new Chief Executive John Ternus. The “Surprise and Shine” presentation marked Ternus’s first public appearance since taking over from Tim Cook, offering a clear signal of his product-first leadership style.
The iPhone Duo, priced from $1,999 for 256 gigabytes of storage and up to $3,199 for a 2-terabyte version, is Apple’s most expensive handset ever. It opens like a book to reveal a bendable display that Apple says is 50 percent larger than the new iPhone 18 Pro Max and 80 percent larger than the iPhone 18 Pro. The device is available for preorder starting Oct. 23.
Ternus positioned the Duo as a fundamental rethink of the foldable category, which has so far been dominated by Samsung and other Android makers. “Others have created foldables that just feel like two phones awkwardly stuck together,” he said. “This results in a square screen that’s rarely suited for the way people use them.” He promised that Apple’s approach “will redesign the experience of using a foldable phone.”
The launch is Apple’s biggest hardware shift since the Vision Pro headset in 2023, and it comes at a critical moment. The company is under pressure to justify premium pricing and to catch up in artificial intelligence, where rivals like Google and OpenAI are moving fast. Ternus, who spent 25 years at Apple in hardware engineering, is expected to lean on design excellence while addressing the company’s AI lag.
In his first minutes on stage, Ternus defended Apple’s AI strategy, calling the iPhone an “intelligent personal hub” that integrates across apps and services. He emphasized privacy, noting that Apple Intelligence runs on-device “whenever it can,” with a private cloud compute option for heavier tasks. “As your personal hub, your iPhone can do so much more for you because it understands your context,” he said, citing calendars, relationships, and routines.
The event also brought unwelcome news for consumers: Apple raised prices across its iPhone lineup. The new iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199, and the Pro Max at $1,299. Older models, including the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17e, each got a $100 increase, a departure from Apple’s usual practice of cutting prices on previous generations. Analysts had anticipated the hikes, driven by soaring costs for memory chips amid the AI boom. Tim Cook, before stepping down, had warned that price increases were “unavoidable.” In June, Apple already raised MacBook and iPad prices by $150 to $300.
Ternus’s debut was carefully staged. Cook appeared in a pre-recorded video, joking that the camera should follow “a mysterious figure” before revealing “not me. That’s your guy.” The camera then turned to Ternus, who expressed his privilege to represent Apple’s teams. Cook’s cameo underscored his continued influence in Washington, where he has maintained a presence, even as he handed day-to-day control to Ternus.
For more on the leadership transition, see our coverage of Ternus taking over from Cook. The pricing strategy is part of a broader trend; earlier this year, Apple raised prices on MacBooks and iPads.
As Apple pushes into foldables and AI, the question remains whether its privacy-first approach can compete with the rapid development at frontier labs. The coming months will test whether the Duo’s premium price and design-first ethos can win over consumers, and whether Ternus can steer Apple through a landscape where AI capability is increasingly a deciding factor. The company also faces political headwinds, including pressure from the Trump administration on issues like map naming, but for now, the focus is on hardware.
